Some questions about electricity and my bill...

Factual Questions
1

I am a complete ignoramous about electricity. I know it’s dangerous, it’s necessary, and it’s expensive.

  1. Does electricity flow (and register on a meter that I will have to pay for) when a lightswitch is ON, but there is either NO bulb, or the bulb is burned out? In the same vein, if I have the ceiling lights where flood “cans” can be added and subtracted, if a track has both burned out and working bulbs, are the cans with burned out bulbs making any difference?

  2. Does electricty flow (and register on a meter I will have to pay for) at the same rate on a dimmer light no matter what position on the dimmer it is at? (i.e., am I saving electricy by keeping the lights down low.)

What other little leaks could I be plugging as far as my electrical usage? How much is getting used by my computer equipment? (Miscellaneous computer equipment and peripherals are left on 24/7)

2

If electricity doesn’t flow, you aren’t buying anything. But if you don’t use any electricity, the power company may impose a minimum on your bill.

You only pay for the kilowatt hours you use. If you use less due to a dimmer, you pay less. However, there will be some overhead loss thru the dimmer.

Check the wattage numbers on the power supplies on your computer stuff, but that is typically a max, and you are unlikely to use all of it all the time.

I believe there are consumer meters you can buy for under $100 that will keep very accurate track of usage as long as you plug everything you want to measure into it.

3

Here’s a consumer-grade usage meter for under $20. I have not tried it. It’s limited to one circuit of 15 amps; it won’t measure your whole house.

As far as “leaks,” any wall warts (power transformers) you might have plugged in all the time do use electricity unless they have an off switch, but the amount they use is extremely small. LED or LCD clocks use very little, also. If you want to check for leaks, turn off or unplug everything in the house, then watch your meter over a few minutes. If it moves at all, something is still using electricity.

I recently replaced a 7 watt incandescent night light with a .5 watt LED version, and I believe I calculated I saved less than $5 per year.

4

Electricity only flows when the circuit is complete, so a fixture with no bulb, or a burnt out bulb will have no electricity flow, because the circuit is broken.

I don’t know as much about dimmers, but what I’ve read online suggests they rapidly turn the light on and off, so you should get some electricity savings having the lights low. If you usually have them low, you’ll probably do better by getting lower watt bulbs, and keeping the dimmer full blast.

Computer equipment, peripherals, and other “always on” electrical devices are considered significant energy wasters. You can try and estimate how big they are by timing your meter with them all plugged in, and timing it again when they’re all unplugged, and calculating the difference in usage.

5

No.

Unless something very odd is happening, a burned out bulb draws no power.

Yes you do save electricity by having a dimmer, but it’s not a proportional reduction exactly due to heating/resistance losses in the dimmer.

Wall warts, appliances on standby, etc. can eat small amounts of power. Buy a Kill-o-Watt meter from Amazon; see Cecil’s column where I tested my house and was able to pay for the cost of the meter by finding one appliance which was plugged in, unused, and sapping electricity. But try considering the bigger-ticket items first - for example, is your refrigerator thermostat set too low, or is it old and poor? They typically consume a large percentage of your non-HVAC electric bill.

Disclaimer: I teach a professional course (for $) on this subject, but am not affiliated with any company like the Kill-o-Watt folks.

6

A burned out incandescent bulb draws no electricity. A switch in the off position, an unplugged cord, or a broken filament in a bulb breaks the circuit and no power is metered. A fluorescent fixture with burned out bulb will still draw some power for the ballast. Current laws call for incandescent bulbs to be phased out. Compact fluorescent bulbs should be cost effective now and save the nuisance of changing them as often as well as electricity. They are a source of mercury pollution. So are coal fired power plants. The LED is gaining, but still not ready for prime time. I will spend most of today working under fluorescent fixtures converted to LED’s.

Computers and peripherals? The flat screens should use power than the old CRT’s, but I am not sure it is that much. Computer power supplies vary in both rating and efficiency. A small, high efficiency one will draw much less than a larger less efficient one. Digging the numbers out can be tough. You also need to know how much power your computer uses. There are websites that estimate it based on the chip, video card, hard drive, etc. Turning them off saves power and unplugging them a little more. Hardly anything has a switch anymore that completely cuts the power.

Yes, there is the Kill A Watt, Power Monitor - Kill A Watt EZ | P3 Plug any 120 volt device into it and it records how much power it uses. Refrigerators use quite a bit of power when running, but are off much of the time.

7

In my experience, the power lost to the dimmer switch itself is negligible; the dimmer can get slightly warm, but if the power lost to it were more than a couple of watts, the switch itself would get very hot after a while.

Seconded. I bought one of these and went around testing all my appliances. Unlike a simple multimeter that tells you voltage or current (but rarely actual power consumption), the Kill-A-Watt meter tells you a device’s actual power consumption, and if you input a cost-per-kilowatt-hour (usually around ten cents; the actual number can be found on your electric bill), it’ll tell you how much an appliance costs to run.

In my case, my PC eats up 75 watts (0.075 kilowatts) while it’s on; so running it for a month costs me about $5.40. Other peripherals, and their monthly cost (YMMV):

-wireless router, 4 watts ($0.29)
-cable modem, 5 watts ($0.36)
-Logitech sound system, 4 speakers + subwoofer: 23 watts ($1.66)
-30" LCD monitor: 50 watts ($3.60)

The monitor isn’t on all the time (maybe an hour a day), so it’s not actually costing me $3.60 a month. However, the speakers are on 24/7, and they consume 23 watts whether they’re making noise or not. That was a big surprise for me.

There have been claims in the past that “standby power” consumption for many devices was outrageously high. the Kill-A-Watt meter has shown this to not be the case for many of the things I own. My DVD player and receiver both show “0” on the Kill-A-Watt when they’re turned off. My cell phone charger consumes just half a watt when it’s plugged in but not charging a phone. My old VCR used 5 watts when not playing a tape, but at least it was displaying a clock for that.

On the news this morning they were villifying DVR’s for their “high” power consumption. I have a TiVo, but have not yet checked it with the Kill-A-Watt meter. However, according to this, it consumes 35-40 watts around the clock, costing $2.52-$2.88 per month.

8

Change any incandescent bulbs you have for compact florescent ones and save quite a bit, maybe 50-70% on their use. Look for deals. Even the dollar store sells them, although they may not last as long. Don’t spend top dollar to save pennies.

9

Lights, wall-warts, etc… for most people, the energy used by those items do not represent a large part of your electric bill. Typically, the five most energy-hungry electrical appliances are:

  1. Electric heat
  2. Air conditioning
  3. Electric water heater
  4. Dehumidifier
  5. Refrigerator

But again, that’s typical. If you have five children, for example, the energy used by your electric dryer may be a significant portion of your electric bill.

10

A programmable thermostat would probably be better than worrying about wall warts nickel and diming you to death.

11

Check with your local Municipal power authority or Community energy conservation group if you have such a thing. In my town we can “borrow” a meter like mentioned above. You pay a $25 dollar deposit but get it back when you return the meter.

12

in addition to your power utility or private conservation group having these meters to lend, so might your public library.

13

In one thread a while back about CFLs I had a cite that I can no longer find that said incandescent lights were about 10% to 20% of the electric bill of a typical home owner that exclusively used incandescent bulbs.

I have a kill-o-watt meter. It does not do well at very low power less than a watt. As such I had no wall wort in my house that I could tell how much power it was using. So wall worts are typically less than one watt just sitting there.

Things of interest:
Wii the wii has two “off” settings. Off that you get by turning off with the remote controls uses about 10 watts. Off where you hold the power button until it turns red was less than a watt.

My Cable set top box when not watching TV uses 10 watts.

The 56 inch flat screen when off uses around 1.5 watts. When on used from 70 to 150 watts. This varied a lot with the scenes being shown. This really ticked me off because California was making noise about trying to limit the size of big screen TVs for conservation purposes. This TV replaced a 36 in Tube TV which used much more power.

14

Just wanted to add that if the cans or track lights have transformers built in, there will be some electricity used even with a burned out or missing bulb. But it will be a negligible amount, same as a wall wart.

15

Heating devices (like an electric stove or oven) can also be significant, though they only use power when turned on. Then again, though, they can’t really be made more efficient, so your only other option is switching to gas (which might be a hassle).

16

Agree. Though electric ranges, hair dryers, and electric clothes dryers are high-wattage devices, they are usually not used enough during the day to make much of an impact on your electric bill. As mentioned in my previous post, attention should be paid to the medium and high wattage electric devices that are used on a more-or-less continuous basis (electric heat, air conditioning, electric water heater, dehumidifier, and refrigerator).

17

What the hell is a wall wart/wort???

And are you SERIOUS re: electricity use varying with the nature of the picture??!?!?! HUH???

18

Wall wart. it is a common name for a small AC adapter. Typically used for some small electronics and phone chargers.

19

The amount of punctuation you are using seems disproportionate to the urgency and seriousness of the topic being discussed.

Wall wart.

20

Wall wart

The TV uses more power if the image is brighter. In a lot of TVs they turn up and down the back light LEDs depending on the image being displayed.